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Sunday, 6 August 2017

Media wars

Does
CNN Really Have a ‘Cosmopolitan Bias’?

During
a recent White House press briefing for Trump’s new immigration
restriction bill, the RAISE
Act, White House adviser Stephen
Miller suddenly
locked horns with embattled CNN political correspondent Jim
Acosta,
accusing Acosta and his network of displaying “cosmopolitan bias.”

According
to critics, the bill favors English-speaking immigrants over others,
as well as special applicant’s status to those who can “financially
support themselves.” The
bill aims to scale back blanket immigration, and focus instead on a
Canadian-style merit-based
admissions.

Critics
of CNN have also made a strong case, especially after the dramatic
loss in 2016 election, that the news network’s coverage is heavily
biased towards east and west coast liberal audiences – effectively
shunning what America’s liberal intelligentsia crassly refer to as
America’s ‘flyover states’ (predominantly white, rural Midwest
and ‘Rustbelt’ states) and blaming
this section of the population for the Hillary Clinton’s
epic November loss.

When
one considers the contempt which CNN commentators and ‘experts’
displayed for American voters throughout the election, the charge
of cosmopolitan
bias is
probably accurate.

Liberal
media outlet City
Labdescribed
how it saw the initial exchange:

Acosta
asked Miller how an immigration policy based on skills comports with
the line from The
New Colossus.
(You know the one: “Give me your tired, your poor/

Your huddled
masses yearning to breathe free.”) The poem “doesn’t say
anything about speaking English or being able to be a computer
programmer,” Acosta said. Miller first observed that
the poem
was added to the Statue of Liberty much later than its construction,
a parry on both the potent symbolism of the poem and the policy at
hand. Then, in an act of willful misreading and pearl-clutching,
Miller seized on an opening in Acosta’s line of reasoning.

The
dialogue continued:

Acosta:
This whole notion, they have to learn English before they get to the
United States—are we just going to bring in people from Great
Britain and Australia?

Miller:
Jim, actually, I have to honestly say: I am shocked at your
statement, that you think only people from Great Britain and
Australia would know English. It reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a
shocking degree, that in your mind—this is an amazing moment—that
you think only people from Great Britain and Australia would speak
English is so insulting to millions of hard-working immigrants from
all over the world. Jim, have you honestly never met an immigrant
from another country who speaks English outside of Great Britain and
Australia? Is that your personal experience?

Acosta
hit back at Miller with tacit accusations of institutional racism,
claiming that any immigration control goes against a ‘tradition of
US immigration.‘

That
talking point triggered a fiery exchange between Miller and
Acosta. Watch:

Others
fired back on Twitter at Acosta’s increasing habit of grandstanding
during press briefing:

Acosta
has been previously forced to defend his employer’s penchant for
running actual fake news stories, most notably the fabricated ‘Trump
Dossier’ promoted
heavily by CNN and their reporters Jim Sciutto and Evan
Perez.

Meanwhile,
CNN’s reputation as a news network continues to plummet, with its
problems compounding at a time when its parent company, Time Warner,
is negotiating a major corporate merger with communications giant
AT&T – one of the biggest acquisition deals in media history.
Part of the deal might mean selling off the damaged brand of CNN in
order to improve the value of the deal. Deadline
Hollywood confirmed
this recently, stating:

“There
are rumblings at the highest executive levels that AT&T’s
top executives are considering divesting some Time Warner assets —
including news organization CNN and
celebrity gossip site TMZ — after they merge.”

Regardless,
there will be a shake up at CNN, which may even include the ouster of
its now disgraced head, Jeff
Zucker.